Charted Worlds
by LightningState
Summary: One of the very few times I make a Birthday wish and it actually comes true.  Things go terribly wrong and I have to find a way to keep this universe going smoothly despite my big mouth.


**Author's Notes:**

This is my first fic and first attempt at writing a story ever, so any criticisms both good and bad are very much appreciated. Yes it's a self-insert fic, I wanted to have some fun with one of my favorite fictional universes and since today is my birthday and that's how this story starts, I thought it would be fun to actually post it today.

I don't have constant access to a computer (my Dad hogs it), so this story might come out slow at first, but I actually have a lot planned already (it's just sitting in my head waiting for me to write it). I'll hopefully be getting my laptop back soon, so until then please bear with me.

Thanks to my friends Tania and Jessie for ideas and for other people's SI fanfics that really gave me the courage to try to write one on my own.

**Disclaimer:**

I do not own Mass Effect, Bioware and EA do.

* * *

><p>I turn on my xbox360 and decide it's a good idea to get my usual Brita water bottle filled up while it boots up. It's early in the morning, well for my family that is, but today is a special day. I don't want to spend it waking up late and not doing anything today. Usually birthday's aren't that big of a deal, but for once I want to actually do something even if that's just saying 'hey' to my friends.<p>

I sneak back into the entertainment room hoping that I didn't make too much noise, it's so easy to wake my mom up, because she sleeps with one eye open.

I sit back in my uncomfortable wooden swivel chair and logon to Xbox Live and join a party with Carlos, Tania and Jessie. An unconscious smile appears on my face as I see their Gamertags.

All of a sudden I am bombarded with a ton of 'Hey's and 'What's up?'s as soon as I join the party. "Hey guys, what are you all doing?"

"Well Tania and I are playing Brink, Jessie is playing Mass Effect 2 and Harry is playing with a cardboard box again," Carlos chuckles.

"It could be worse, he and ChiChi could be playing on their bikes and get hit by a car again." I smile, "You should be thanking Lady Luck that the worst thing he's playing with is a box."

I could almost see Carlos smirking. "Well do you guys want to play something else?" I glance down to my stack of recently played games; Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect, Fallout New Vegas, MMA, Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Dead Rising 2, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Mortal Kombat and Call of Duty Black Ops.

"I know!" I smile as I reach out for my chosen game, "Lock n' Load ladies, let's go kick some Nazi Zombie ass!" Cheers erupt from the headset as I place the game into my console, let's do this!

* * *

><p>My usual cheery mood that comes from playing video games and having fun is now gone, my usual shit eating grin replaced with an emotionless face. Three and a half hours of continuous bad luck at the random box can do that to a person, especially if everyone else on the team is getting their favorite weapons while you are constantly calling out for help and getting overrun because your weapons suck. Even after we stopped playing and I put my most beloved video game in, my bad luck is seemingly following me no matter what game I play.<p>

"Light-ning…?"

"Yes?" I take a sip of my water and place it back down.

"LIGHTning?"

"What?"

"LIGHTNING?" My headset blares in my ear as I quickly try to turn down the volume in an attempt to retain my hearing in case he decides to yell again.

"WHAT?" I yell and notice only too late how really loud that was. I remove my headset and switch it to the ear that's not ringing. I can hear laughing coming from the speaker before it even gets to my ear. "It's seriously not funny, my ear is ringing cause of you. What the hell do you want?"

"Hi. I love you…" I smirk slightly.

"**I am the Harbinger of your destruction!"** I have my Shepard go into cover just as the possessed Collector sends his biotic wave towards my character. _God as if playing on insanity isn't hard enough already I have to deal with Miranda deciding to randomly dance on a crate when I told her to take cover behind it instead. Ok she's not dancing, but just standing there, again. I really hate when this game glitches. _ **"AaAAah"** I sigh as I recognize Miranda's death cry, she's always the first to die..

"God damnit, I give up!" I drop my xbox controller into my lap and lean back in my chair as I watch Grunt get ripped a new one by two Collectors. I turn to get a drink of my water and the familiar death music rings in my ears as I look up to see my dead Shepard sprawled out on the ground, Miranda dead on top of the crate next to her.

"Noooo, don't give up on our love!" I hear a hurt voice come from the headset.

"No, no I love you too Carlos, and you too Tania." I added quickly and heard a satisfied grunt coming from her mic. "I'm just so done with this mission I'm on, I swear Miranda dies on purpose! She practically shouts for the Collectors to shoot her."

"Still getting the IFF at the Collector base?" Jessie laughs, "Should have been a soldier, but no you couldn't pass up the biotics, huh?"

"Shut up." I grin, "So you're telling me that if you had the choice in real life to have amazing powers to make things move, make a barrier for yourself or even freeze a person with a stasis field you would have no desire to do so and just stick with having huge guns?"

Silence, then he answers being hardly audible, "Nooo… I wouldn't say that…"

"There you see that? I win."

"Well you know what _**I**_ would do? I would have bad ass powers _and_ bad ass guns, guess that means I win!"

I facepalm with an audible slap, "Thank you Carlos you are really helping. You don't even know anything about the game!" I hear hurried padded footsteps coming from the hallway into my room and I look towards the door to see Zoey looking at me with her little worried face coming towards me.

"I know and I don't want to know anything about the game. I find a snail more interesting than your silly game." I feel Zoey nosing my hand and whining at me, whenever she hears a slap she thinks someone is attacking me so she automatically comes to investigate. "Did you hear me? I said a SNAIL is more interesting!"

"Yeah, yeah I heard you I-" I hear howling sounds coming from my IPhone as I look down to see my fiancé's mother calling me, in the other room I hear my own mother calling my name. "Hey guys I have to go, sorry I might be on later, see ya." Hurriedly I turn off everything and answer my phone and start walking towards where my mother's voice came from, Zoey following behind me. "Hello?"

* * *

><p>"Thank you, love you too, bye." I smile as I push the 'End' on my phone and lock it. I stand in the middle of the living room for a few seconds looking around, Zoey sits down and looks up at me waiting for me to decide what to do. I smile down at her, she's seriously the prettiest German Shepard I've ever seen. I lean down to give her a pat on the head. "Mom?"<p>

"Out here!" My head turns to the slightly open door leading to the backyard. I open it all the way and try to walk outside, but Zoey forces her way through the door first making me almost fall flat on my face. I curse as I regain my balance and watch as she runs to where a poor dove is sitting on the fence. It makes an irritated noise as the dog scares it off, she trots back to me with her chest puffed out proudly even as Mom yells at her for scaring the poor birds. "Was that Jake you were on the phone with? Is he coming over today?"

I shake my head as I hear Chewie's hurried little steps come from the side of the house following my dad who's carrying a cake box that says Coldstone on top. "Coldstone cake!" I squeak excitedly, "No, it was his Mom though wishing me a happy birthday. I haven't heard from him yet today," I take a peak down at my watch. "He's probably still in school, it's only a Wednesday, wow it looks really bad out here, do you think we're going to get rained on?"

Dad takes the cake out of the box and sets it on the glass table while Mom reaches into her pocket to get out a package of candles and starts placing them on the cake one by one. "Maybe I doubt it though, doesn't smell like rain and the storms right on top of us." Dad says looking up at the sky.

"He should still call you, even if it's before he goes to school. It's your birthday!" Mom sighs, "When I was your age I would have never put up with the stuff you do." After putting six candles on in the shape of a smiley face she lights them.

I scratch my head nervously thinking of something to say before she goes on raving about my fiancé. "Hey there's even candles! We never use candles, wow thank you, you guys." I hug her tightly and give her a kiss on the cheek. "I usually just have to imagine me blowing out candles on my birthday, now I can actually do it."

"Thanks now you're making me feel like a bad mother for never putting candles on the cake." She hugs me back tighter than I ever thought she could and then breaks the hug and leads me over to where Dad put down the cake, "Ok now you have to make a wish! Hurry so we can eat it, I figured that we can even have margaritas later." Yay cake and alcohol, what a combo.

I playfully roll my eyes at her, hey what the heck. I close my eyes and think of my wish and blow my candles out. I open my eyes to both my parents applauding me. I always thought it was funny that people applaud after blowing out candles. It's like yay you know how to breathe great job! Now let's eat the cake you just spit on, yay!

I feel myself being shoved and quickly taking a breath before I fall into the pool. Even underwater I can hear Zoey's angry barks and Chewie's welcoming growl, realizing my phone is in my pocket I rush to the surface and immediately pull myself out of the pool.

I see Jake leaning over trying to calm Zoey down and failing miserably at it. It's not very often that you can sneak up on her so she's really freaked out by his random appearing act. I quickly take my phone out of my pocket to check it making sure it still working, it not. "What the fuck Jake!" I scream and prepare to lung at him, one of the rare times he tries to be cute and funny and he does it with my phone in my pocket. I hear a loud CRACK and I'm suddenly glued to the ground as it feels like every atom in my body is on fire. I can't actually see anything, just random scenes from my life flash before my eyes and as soon as it happened it stopped. I collapse to the ground in a heap.

* * *

><p>I blink my eyes as I look around, everything slowly coming into focus. I realize I'm laying down in what looks to be a grassy field. Great so this is where you go when you die, you end up getting grass stains all over your clothes, fantastic! I hope God or whoever is around here has at least a decent washer and dryer, hmm I wonder if he can blink away stains? Blink and it goes away. Or would that be an abuse of his power? Why do I assume God is a he? Argh so many questions…!<p>

I sigh as I sit up looking at my clothes. "Fuck I knew it grass stains, and I like this shirt!" I lick my thumb and try to get the smug off the "Commander Shepard" part of my shirt and suddenly gasp in realization at what I just said a hand going up to cover my mouth. You can't swear in heaven! I suddenly remember Daniel Tosh's standup comedy special for Comedy Central '_Where does it say in the bible that you can't fucking swear?' –God 'No fucking where' –Daniel_ and I can't help but giggle. Being dead feels so anticlimactic, I think to myself as I let out another sigh. What exactly was I expecting?

"So this is how it feels to be dead, hmpf I don't actually feel any different." I say as I stretch out my arms and try to pop the bones in my neck, I smile as I feel a satisfying pop and I breathe in deeply for the first time of my new existence and it… stinks? "What the-?" I feel a light bump on the back of my head and immediately get to my feet looking for what intruded on my personal space bubble. My eyes go wide as I stare jaw-slackened at a floating blob that is seeping green gas from somewhere, and I am scared stiff and I realize there's dozens of them!

"Oh my god, oh my god! I'm in hell I knew this was too good to be true!" I screech as I turn around and run towards the end of the valley and start climbing up a hill of jagged rocks. My heart is pounding so hard, wait my _heart_ is pounding, is that something that usually happens to a recently deceased person?

As I reach the top, I stop and sit right in-between two huge boulders. I glance back towards the valley to see the blobs still floating around as if nothing happened. "What? Humans have colonized this planet right? Right, so I'm not going to wear this helmet unless I have to, besides I'm sick of recycled air." I lay down immediately trying to hide while cursing myself for adding dirt to my grass-stained t-shirt. "What the hell are those?"

I steal a quick glance back to where my new best friend MC Blob is. "Gas bags." Wow real original, "Don't worry – they're harmless."

I get up into a crouch turning around to look at the drop behind me. It's like someone took huge blocks of rock and made a hill, how the hell did I get up here so fast anyway? I get about halfway down when I realize that maybe hiding from those people was stupid and nearly facepalm. "Great my only hope of getting answers and I hide from them." I continued to make my way down very narrowly avoiding breaking my neck in the process and come along a path as déjà vu hits.

The path goes to my left and right, but a few feet ahead of me is a very steep drop, but the view is amazing. Sure the weather could have been better, since it looks like there's going to be a lightning storm, but there's this huge building in the distance unlike anything I've seen before. My feet betray my body as I take a few steps forward before I come to a full halt. What the hell is that? Looking at my surroundings I try to locate where the faint buzzing noise I'm hearing is coming from.

My hair stands on end as I see two things; from the left a man with his gun raised is rushing towards my position who is seemingly not really paying attention to his surroundings and to my right is what looks to be a really big weird blueish-purple webcam with a gun attached to the bottom of it. This is defiantly not good, that guy's going right towards the thing!

Not really thinking I spring into action and sprint towards the guy that is unknowingly running to his death and tackle him. Apparently at the first sign of movement the webgun started firing, midway into my tackle with the oblivious man I feel several shots hit me, but I can't feel the pain. The man lets out an oomph as we hit the ground together hard, my hearing starts to take a pounding as I hear bursts of gunfire.

The man rolls me off of him gently guiding me to lay down in the dirt beside him. I hear even more gun shots as I look to the man beside me, looks like he got shot in the shoulder. "Jenkins! Tend to her before she goes into shock!" the female in the group shouts as she runs towards us taking cover behind the boulder next to us. As I slowly exhale I realize I had been holding my breath.

The pain hits me all at once as a sharp pain emits from my chest as I try to breathe, my hand goes up instinctively one of the holes in my chest that hurts the worst, I feel a very warm thick substance, that I can only imagine is blood, cover my hand. My head reels as I know I'm close to becoming unconscious. The shooting ceases as Jenkins reaches into his suit and produces a small tube and screws off the top, but judging from the look on his face he's not exactly sure what to do. Great I'm going to die because Leeroy Jenkins here decided to glaze over in his first aid class. "I'm going to die again.." I say with great effort as he removes my hand from my chest and without any warning he sticks the tube into the hole in my chest and squeezes the entire contents out.

"What the hell are you doing? We have limited supply of that, and that is certainly not how you use it!" Before I know it my field of vision is focused on the female soldier kneeling right where Jenkins had been reaching into her suit for something. The pain in my chest is partly numbed, but my breathing is even more difficult. I involuntarily have a cough attack that racks my body with pain until I cough up blood. The woman at my side slides an arm under my armpit on the side that isn't a meaty mess and lifts me up and leans me against the boulder we are taking cover behind.

I attempt to look at my injuries seeing a lot of blood as I feel a gentle, but firm hand pushing me back into the rock. I let out a grunt as I'm forced back, I finally notice my body being a lot colder than it usually is and the need to just rest for awhile. "Hey, hey! Come on now keep your eyes on me. Stay awake, talk to me." I force myself to focus on her face noticing I could see her face surprisingly well despite the helmet she had on, she is stunning! Beautiful bright green eyes, pink full lips, absolutely perfect features and a cute endearing scar through her left eyebrow and another slight one above her lip. There is something very familiar about her, but I can't put my finger on it. "Kaiden, Jenkins stay frosty, the last thing we need is more drones sneaking up on us!" She turns to bark to the other two then turns back to me I can barely feel her as she is doing something to my wounds, my vision starts to blur and I can feel my eyes getting heavy when it hits me. Jenkins, Kaiden?

My eyes widen and my heart starts to pound even more at my newly found knowledge and everything I went through suddenly makes sense. "S..Shepard?" I barely manage with some blood still in my mouth, I turn my head to spit it out trying to get rid of the metallic taste.

I can see her visibly flinch at her own name confirming my suspicions. Her demeanor suddenly changes as she lifts a delicate eyebrow at me. "How do you-" She is interrupted as I have another coughing fit, even more blood comes up than last time.

My breathing starts to get really labored, maybe my pounding heart is rushing the inevitable. I really feel close to death and as much as I want to cry right now and be selfish, in my heart I know I can at least do something good before I die.

I reach out with my hand in her direction and surprisingly her hand meets mine halfway. My hand squeezes hers as much as I am able, I see her eyes soften a bit as she gently squeezes my hand back. Her mouth opens as if to say something, but I cut her off. "As unbelievable as this may be I need you to listen. I know why you are here." I try to ignore the pain as I breathe in, "You need to get going now if you want to save Nihlus. Don't let Saren kill him, he's already killed enough.. When you run into Ashley have her join your squad you're going to need her, tell her to take you to the nearest shipping depot that's where Saren is going to kill Nihlus. You can ask your questions to her later when you get back to the Normandy." My vision is horrible now and it's hard to focus on any one thing in particular. I need to hurry! "Stop Saren… Get to the beacon, Liara will eventually help you with the visions. You're the galaxy's only hope from.. the… Reapers…"

My eyes close unwillingly and all of my senses dull, "Hey! Come on wake up! Shit… Joker-" the voice is so far away. I realize I'm mumbling something, but it's not registering to my brain exactly what. My last thought before the darkness completely engulfs me, anticlimactic my ass…


End file.
